The Importance of Reading the Syllabus and Assignment Sheets

Yuan Zhao, Writing Consultant

Not until recently did I notice that not all the students read emails, people tend to neglect group text messages, and I know most of you will skip this blog post. But please don’t apply such non-reading strategies to your syllabus and assignment sheets. In contrast, I suggest you read the following two types of documents—syllabus and assignment sheets—very closely.

For this term, in addition to working at the University Writing Center, I also teach one first-year composition class. This double identity gives me a lens to observe students’ reading behaviors to the abovementioned two documents and the possible inconvenient consequences. When opening a writer’s Writing Center appointment form, I usually see a writing draft uploaded by the writer, but not often do I see the assignment sheet. Even though sometimes, writers copy and paste parts of the assignment requirements to the appointment form, as a Writing Center consultant, I still expect more information relevant to the writing tasks. The in-person consultations are fine, but situations can be less ideal if it is a Virtual Writing Center appointment for written feedback. Without assignment sheets or writing prompts as references, it is hard for Writing Center consultants to decide whether the writing projects address or deviate from the expected topics. In consequence, Writing Center consultants can only pay more attention to local issues, such as the mechanism within paragraphs, transitions, topic sentences, formatting, and language styles, while it is comparatively difficult for them to give feedback on higher-level concerns, such as thesis statements, or whether the organization or evidence employed in the draft address the requirements of the writing task.

In the very first class of the first-year composition courses, I led students to read the syllabus and discuss the assignment sheets. But we all forget things, and forgetting is a process that we need to fight against, so after a few weeks, I did not feel surprised to receive student submissions that failed to meet the requirements of the assignment sheets. Some of them missed the due time without emailing me for an extension; some submitted a Google Doc link while the assignment sheet specifically required a Microsoft Word document; some seldom followed the required MLA or APA styles, collaging the font choice, spacing, margins, and headers/title pages. From their performance, I know they did not revisit the assignment sheets closely before submitting the papers. If students choose not to read the assignment sheets even before the due time of submission, when will they read them?

According to the course description for ENG102, one of the learning outcomes is that students’ writing should “analyze the needs of an audience and the requirements of the assignment or task.” Reading syllabus and assignment sheets closely is one crucial step to approaching that learning outcome. In addition, the first-year composition classrooms might be the first chance (and sometimes, the last chance) for a writing instructor to explain in the most meticulous manner the significance of different writing conventions and how they work in college. It means some instructors teaching intermediate or advanced courses might suppose students know well the basics of academic writing since they have completed the first-year composition courses. However, in some cases, students can fail their expectations. If some do not learn enough composition knowledge, I do hope they at least learn some skills to conduct learning—to know where to look for the assigned composition requirements. In fact, within the syllabus and assignment sheets, we can always find the resources that instruct us on what we should do.

Why Should We Read the Syllabus

A syllabus might be less directly relevant to writing tasks, but it is a framing document for the whole course where we can find detailed information. For example, some instructors allow extensions, while others can be very strict on the time to submit assignments. According to the details in the class policies, students can predict what kind of assignment writing strategies they can employ before submitting their projects. For another example, most syllabi contain a section for assigned reading lists. When reading the class plan and the list of assigned readings, students can notice clues for the course design, and sometimes can get themselves better prepared for the class by reading the materials in advance. In addition to the course policies, some instructors include various university resources in their syllabi, and as far as I know, most students skip reading them. For sure, it is not necessary to read them closely. Just a kind reminder, if you encounter some difficulties and need assistance at the campus, besides using Google or ChatGPT to look for answers, your syllabus often contains more direct answers for what you need.

Why Should We Read Assignment Sheets

If a syllabus provides us with scaffolding instructions on what a course expects us to do, what assignment sheets offer is often something more practical and manageable. For a particular writing task, reading prompts from an assignment sheet can inform a writer what topic they should be attentive to, what arguments they might head to, and what evidence or examples they should prepare. Reading prompts is more like conducting a reading comprehension quiz. Sometimes, highlighting the key phrases in the prompts can be very helpful. From the highlighted keywords, we can always refer to our class readings and see if there are potential connections we can make so that we can transfer them into writing. The assigned reading materials sometimes are great sources when students need to include evidence or examples, and some instructors prefer seeing students doing so. Their preference lies in that instructors know the reading materials well and it is convenient for them to provide more engaging feedback. In addition, if the assignment has some particular formatting requirements, please guarantee your writing project follows them strictly. Prior to reading your writing content, instructors read your paper format first. The formatting details from your writing often lead instructors to take it for granted whether you are serious about your writing. As a side note, you can also find useful information about format editing from the webpage of the University Writing Center, including the most updated MLA, APA, and Chicago styles.

Don’t Read Your Assignment Sheet Alone

Now, I assume you will read your assignment sheet closely, highlighting the keywords and checking the specific formatting requirements. I also understand that after applying the close reading strategies, you might still be confused about the writing tasks. Don’t leave the confusion unresolved before you embark on your writing. In addition to reading alone, you should read your assignment sheets with other people. First and foremost, whenever you find something unclear that needs further explanations in the assignment, you can always make use of instructors’ office hours to raise your concerns. Reading with your instructor who is also the author of the assignment sheet is the most effective approach to untangling the confusion. Second, you can read with your classmates. In fact, when you read the assignment sheets with your peers, you are doing something more than teasing out the requirements of the assignment sheets, since you are working as a literacy community. Since you and your peers know a lot about the course context, when reading the assignment sheets, why don’t you brainstorm for the writing task? Everyone can roughly share their writing purposes, outlines, resources and even discuss some practical writing strategies to address instructors’ expectations for the writing projects. By listening to your peers’ writing plans, you can build and revise your writing plans, too. Finally, you are always more than welcome to read the assignment sheets with the University Writing Center consultants. And I highly suggest you do so when you make an appointment with us. All of the consultants are experienced graduate students and some of us have teaching experience. Based on your verbal descriptions about the project and the written requirements from the assignment sheets, we can offer constructive feedback addressing your project, and hopefully, we can help boost your confidence to help you become a better writer.

Reading syllabi and assignment sheets cultivates important professional reading skills. It is the prerequisite condition to writing, which requires specific responses to meet the requirements of different tasks. The reading activity entails responsibilities as a reader, a communicator, an executor, and a writer. As a responsible reader, you have to read the materials closely; as a reliable communicator, you are expected to talk to different parties to make sure you understand the tasks; as an executor, you have to make decisions on what to write and how to write it; and as a dedicated writer, you compose a writing product as a response to a series of specific requirements. So start your writing by reading the syllabus and assignment sheets.

How to Write While Traveling

Elizabeth Pope, Writing Consultant

Traveling abroad and throughout the National Parks of the United States formed the bedrock of my undergraduate and graduate education. I began travel writing in my twenties, which consisted of a leather-bound journal that was tied with a string, rather than bound with a lock. The journal was an atlas of maps and keys of language that only I might understand rather than linear prose. There were train numbers to catch from Zurich to Rome, Paris to Versailles, Munich to Amsterdam, and London to Stratford-Upon-Avon. At a bed and breakfast in the town where Shakespeare was born in Stratford-Upon-Avon, I—absent-mindedly—left my travel journal 20 years ago on a wooden table with lace doilies and a blush oil lamp.

There were names of objects that I stumbled onto in museums like a piece of the Berlin Wall that was spray-painted “Change Your Life.” There were scribbled streets that led to the Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris where Oscar Wilde was buried. There was a recipe for the traditional British breakfast that I ate the morning I lost my journal. Blood pudding resides in a crevasse of my mind that does not vanish—the way blood pudding looked blackened as a briquet of coal, eggs yolk-up and runny, baked beans in a tomato gravy, mushrooms sautéed, warm tomatoes, marmalade, and black tea. Names of ruins and eroding statues of goddesses within the fountains forming the roman streets led me back to gelato or mussels cooked in lemony saffron, wine, and saltwater at that restaurant down the street from the Colosseum in Rome—that I might never return to but recall through association of hunger that pulled me through landscapes.

I’ve often thought of the poem lost in those pages, left in England at the bed and breakfast, like an artifact for someone else to discover. I think of the map inside that journal that led to the restaurant in Interlaken, where cattle herds rounded the center of the city, where I shared Rösti, a giant pancake of potatoes—dripping in beer and butter—before hiking the Swiss Alps, before taking the Grindelwald Terminal (a sky-lift) to Jungfraujoch and the observatory, where snow whips in artic winds, where it’s impossible to walk in the wind at peaks of 11,000 feet above sea level. And it’s for that reason, I’ve never traveled with such a fine leather-bound journal again. A journal like that might eventually slip from fingers by negligence, wind, or distraction over long voyages with interchanges of trains, trams, sky-lifts, and airplanes; or while camping and hiking through rural and rough terrain.

Now, I travel with small notebooks and only write words, brief phrases, and maps that lead to impressions while in a specific scene to jog my memory. I practice presence while traveling. I refrain from a montage of pictures, but I do take photo journals of images that I wish to remember like the mirage restaurant with a wooden windmill and a ghost train that appeared after hours of desolate Icelandic rock and moss-scape through the passenger windows as we traveled from Sioux Falls to Badlands National Park. Or the sun setting over the Badlands when I wanted to remember eroding mountains as a monument to our ecological existence, the process of erosion by a river—the way the White River and Cheyenne River eroded millions of years of rock deposits to form a landscape that looks like an extraterrestrial glacial melt desert. Or the way the fossils felt as though they were crumbling under our feet as we ascended to one of the many summits that form the silhouette of the Badlands. I worked to remember that vantage were everything is exposed and eternal gorges with plates of rock form a superposition of coverings, as if to protect the oldest layers of earth. I worked to remember that the elements were careless. Exposed layers of earth in South Dakota disappear through harsh winters, thunderstorms that rock the sky with lightening and belt so loud it sounds like the earth is cracking, and winds that fall into themselves to form tornadoes that move through campgrounds to disappear as if they never existed.

I worked to remember bison from our time in South Dakota—its brindle coat that growths thick like an insulated wall to melt snow and subsist subzero temperatures, its head as beast-like as a minotaur, large as a rhinoceros, and royal as a lion arriving out of the visage of the grasslands in herds. I worked to remember the terror and electricity of standing close enough to touch a buffalo that wandered from the herd. The buffalo that walked beside my sister and posed for that one singular good photograph before the herd formed a wall in the road. High on adrenaline from such closeness, we blindly failed to consider that with a single bow of a horn that buffalo might flip us into air and trample us into the prairie dogs that kept peeping up like jack-n-the boxes.

Some images are hard to forget while traveling, especially when delays and detours occur. Like when the RV in front of us in the Black Hills lodged and stuck in the natural tunnel of the Needles, landmasses of granite that rise out of the mountains like cathedrals. The Needles ascend like petrified staffs of the gods and goddesses, or stalagmites. Traveling journal, in situ, shouldn’t be a novel of hours spent writing prose or poems. A travel journal should consist of signals, keys, places, names, and locations to remember to tell someone to visit. A travel journal should be shared so that others can locate the experience. Although there is never a replication of a singular experience, like the sunset we stumbled on while driving Wilderness Loop where we fed wild horses and wild burros in South Dakota. That sunset will never look or feel the same for the next person who visits that exact location any other time in history. In that sunset we were tired, dirty from camping, and enamored with the expanse of a landscape that we never knew existed before placing our feet on the ground and looking around.

I kept a travel log to remember waking up our ragged, sleepy children from tree hammocks and tents at the campsite in Acadia National Park at 3 a.m.to watch the first sunrise hit the continental United States on Cadillac Mountain in Maine. It’s the coffee that I remember most around camp in the morning, bits of grounds floating in the aluminum percolator, coal dark coffee, the salt that forms on the rim of your skin when you wake beside the rock cliffs of Maine, the way the glacial lake steals your breath after jumping from the granite boulders forming the natural pools that rest in the Black Hills of South Dakota. Travel logs are reserved for the moments you might be stuck in traffic or around a campfire when everyone is tired, dishes are washed, food is in bear-proof storage away from the tents and hammocks, and the everyone is too tired to eat the marshmallows they’ve roasted. Travel writing is a moment of reflection in mind, memory, word, or picture. It’s something that is written quickly so that you can revisit it again when you arrive home. Then, at home—when you’re sick for another adventure—that’s the time to unearth notes, pictures, and memories to piece together the trip.

In Pursuit of Creating a Better World

Mahde Hassan, Writing Consultant

Give me a good writer, I’ll give you a better world. There are people who love writing but there are also people who are reluctant to write much. Those who have not a keen interest in writing can be very good readers and thus find huge enthusiasm in reading and knowing new things, thereby changing perspectives and gaining a positive mindset on things around us. Have you imagined that a good writer could bring about positive changes in society along with making the world better by promoting love, empathy, kindness, and equality?

As a University Writing Center consultant at the University of Louisville, I work with writers across many disciplines. In the conference sessions, one of my prime goals is to promote love, empathy, and equality in addition to aid them to be better writers by being welcoming, making them feel comfortable, not being dominant in the conversations and offering them notes on the session.

When a writer walks in an appointment, the first thing I do is that I always try to be welcoming to them. Sometimes I find them from the disciplines I know much about and other times I find them from the disciplines that I am not deeply knowledgeable of. But since I was trained on how to offer feedback on any papers, I don’t hesitate to try to help. I enjoy helping them because I see them being great writers and having an impact on this with their writing skill. Besides that, I let the writers settle in in the first couple of minutes of the appointments without rushing much about the assignment they work on.

In the appointments, I also try to make the writers feel comfortable right from the beginning so that they can inform me of their concerns. For that I prefer asking questions outside the assignments they are working on. Sometimes I ask them “How was the week?”, “How are you?” or simply I ask, “How your semester has been going on so far?”. I also share any interesting memory I have related to their answers and the major they are pursuing. I try to make them feel at home with that kind of attitude.

Most importantly, I love being a good listener rather than talking more or controlling the conversations. Not being dominant in the conversations with the writers allows me to figure out the concerns and struggles they have associated with that assignment or work. Furthermore, I try to make them feel valued and important. It, in turn, brings about surprising benefits to me. Once they feel valued, they never hesitate to share everything they want to know or are confused about. There comes the best opportunity for me to serve them. When I offer insights, I also ask for their opinions time to time instead of talking for a long time at a stretch so that the conferences become engaging. Hence, this mindset helps me enormously to listen to all they might have to say and empathize while offering them suggestions. I not only offer suggestions but also ensure that they understand why and how bringing something new to their paper or taking out something can lead their paper to be a better one. Sometimes, I attempt to keep them motivated by only pointing out what they did amazingly in a paper initially. And listening to them first helps me the most to hear their perspectives and struggles, and thus thinking of improving the paper puts me in their shoes.

Finally, I ensure that they have some notes about our discussion on their way back from the Writing Center. In case the writers start working on the assignment or project a few days after the appointment, they can look back at the suggestions I have made. In that way, they would feel confident with getting started or working further on a paper. Throughout the appointments, I try to spread love, be compassionate and be equal to every writer. My core goal is to help them be better writers, but I also bring those traits into place when running the appointment to promote a better world. If at least some writers out of the hundreds of appointments I am dealing with can pass on the kindness, empathy and love they receive along with capitalizing the skills they grow from the writing center, it is highly likely that the world can change radically. That’s why I believe whatever position we work in, we always have opportunities to promote empathy and kindness. It eventually creates a better world. When I am nice to others in my profession, a message of spreading love, empathy and equality is also conveyed to them implicitly. Once upon a time there were not many technological advancements, but neither were there as many crimes, wars, terrorism attacks and natural disasters as there are now. Hence, I believe each of us needs to be mindful of spreading empathy, equality, and kindness through whatever role we work in to bring back the peace.

Ode to a Writer’s Callus

Wendell Hixson, Writing Consultant

When I was young, really young, I had a hard time differentiating my right from my left. I was a victim of the condescending phrase for the directionally-compromised: “your other left.” And no, the “L” and left-hand trick didn’t work. In the moment, the shape of the “L” would always escape me, so the left-hand trick was useless. I was a directionless little wanderer. However, due to countless lessons in cursive and my proclivity for writing way too much, I had quickly developed a writer’s callus. After seeing the little bump on my ring finger and asking about it, my parents told me that it had come from how I write with my right hand. Now, that actually stuck with me. From then on, I would always remember where my writer’s callus was, and I knew which side was my right. Luckily, I still have this little writer’s bump. I admit that I still use this trick and yield that, in the moment, I still forget what an “L” looks like. That’s against the point. This anecdote was really just a longwinded way of emphasizing an often ignored reality: writing is a physical experience, not just an emotional one.

For starters, how many people have a routine? And I don’t just mean a writing routine. I mean a routine for writing. I know, for me, that I need to be sat comfortably at a desk, a little chilly, in front of a window, and supplied with a sandwich and glass of water before I’ve entered into my ideal writing mood. While it’s good to learn how to effectively write in all situations, there is nothing wrong with having a personal routine that you employ to feel inspired and prepared. There’s also a lot of fun and comfort to be found in discovering what inspires you best. Remember, there is nothing wrong with treating yourself a little to some creature comforts before you write. Writing is intensive. It’s taxing. It’s vulnerable. It can leave you feeling exhausted, exhilarated, anxious, confident, confined, freed, or all of the above. It affects you, the writer, just as much as you affect the page. Sometimes this can even come at higher costs than we care to usually talk about.

As teachers, students, workers, writers, we all understand the reality of college. Most of us will stay up late, toiling over some assignment or research project, calling to the Muses in hopes that our blank page will suddenly fill with the words we need for an “A.” But, do we often enough acknowledge the toll this can take on our bodies? Writing isn’t a purely mental exercise, and—much like most physical exercise—shouldn’t be overdone. (I recommend also reading writing consultant Andrew Messer’s recent blog on burnout and writer’s block, as well as Charlie Ward’s latest blog on self-care.) Learn how to relax and find the proper times to make a daily “exercise” out of your writing, if possible. To further our metaphor, take time to exercise different aspects of your writing. Sometimes it’s good to simply write your papers, other times it proves useful to practice your skills in revising and editing, and other times still it’s good to remember that seeking guidance and even just reading are also wonderful ways to strengthen your skills.

However, writing shouldn’t be seen as all school-based work or business reports. I think that the most neglected physical aspect of writing, especially in school and the workforce, is how writing can also be for your own enjoyment. When we journal, when we physically write poetry, when we practice our 8 billion current forms of uniquely wonderful handwriting, we create a very personal little treasure. I recommend writing down something personal or something meaningful to yourself. Typing onto a screen, I believe, is extremely useful, but it can also separate us from what makes writings, books, and letters so wonderful. It requires a concerted effort to take a pen to paper and more effort still to preserve what has been created. Like a personal museum or library, in writing things down on paper, there is a compelling drive to keep it safe and able to be called forth at later dates. When writing letters, there is a valued and rewarding feeling in exerting so much effort on something that is to be given to another. It reminds us that writing has been commodified and streamlined, but it is, primarily, a work of art that we value as a record of our thoughts, feelings, and history. Is there not something endearing about a close friend’s own emotions and thoughts transferred to the page in their own distinctive hand? Is there not something rewarding about your lines of poetry or prose taking as much physical effort to create as mental effort? Is there not something meaningful in the simple thoughts we may have scribbled years ago about a wonderful day we’ve since forgotten?

At risk of overstaying my welcome, I want to stress that writing is always from and for you in some regard. It takes a lot out of you. Realistically, it will always be a demanding experience, but in the best way. So, try to always give what you can for school or work or what have you, but don’t forget that it’s your work. It’s your skill. It’s your effort that you pour yourself into. By creating and holding on to something tangible, you will also hold on to something that demonstrates the effort, the emotion, and the part of you that you had to give to create it. Hopefully, in realizing that you’ve physically created something so potentially meaningful, you can literally grasp how valuable and useful your writing can be. And, in the end—if you’re still not convinced—writing things down could make a little bump on your finger that might occasionally help with your rights and lefts, especially if you forget what an “L” looks like. Still pretty worth it, I think.

Writer’s Block: The Inevitable and Surmountable Adversity

Andrew Messer, Writing Consultant

Have you ever stared at a blank page for ten, twenty, or thirty minutes, the desire or need to write clawing in your head desperate to get out onto the page but you just can’t write it down? You can’t formulate or articulate the ideas in your head onto a page, typing away at your keyboard and then erasing the paragraph you wrote for some reason that you may or may not have made up? Me too: in fact, I’d wager that if you came to the University Writing Center at any given time of any given day of any given year and worked with any consultant that has ever worked there, they would have had the same problem. Even sitting here typing away at my screen I worry about it. Will my ideas flow? Will they make sense? Is this even worth writing? It is. I promise it is, and it goes away.

There is no magical way to get rid of it either, or if it is I am waiting just as patiently as the next person to be told what it is; however, I promise it is surmountable. And while there is no magic cure-all of sage, lavender, and bitterroot, I believe there are some strategies that I have developed over the years that have proven to be quite helpful in overcoming this small compositionary plague. So, if you have a minute or two, read on and I’ll impart to you my wisdoms.

Step Away

Charlie mentioned this in their last blog post on self-care, and I want to mention it here because I think it is an excellent piece of advice: step away, take a break. Even if you’ve just sat down to write, sometimes what the brain needs is just some time away. Go for a walk, take a nap (who cares if you woke up three hours ago), get a snack (or a meal if you haven’t already), or just do something that makes you happy. Mood and emotions are pivotal in how one goes about their writing process, and if you feel the weight of stress bearing down upon your shoulders while you stare blankly at the white rectangle on the word processor, then you likely won’t feel like writing. At least, if you’re like me, you won’t even feel like you can.

You can’t overlook the power of a solid break. It can be long or short, and that may very well be for you to feel out in the moment. But your brain is good at telling you what you need to do, and sometimes writer’s block is simply a way for your brain to tell you to step back, take a breather, and come back again once you feel more refreshed and invigorated. I know from personal experience how much more comfortable I feel working when I have done something for myself just before.

Read

It may sound deceptively simple, but I promise you it can work wonders. It can be helpful to take a break from your screen when you’re trying to write and you find yourself stuck, but when you do it might not always be the best idea to turn your attention to another—though there is something to be said for watching a show to calm down if you are panicking. However, I find that when I can’t quite put words to my thoughts, reading really turns the cogs in my brain much faster than any other stimuli.

And when I say read, I don’t have anything particular in mind. Sometimes rereading your sources can be helpful and can help you to materialize your thoughts; sometimes you need a break from the assignment altogether and you may feel yourself drawn to the novel you are reading. Either way it will get you away from the page and give you some much needed space from the intellectual work that is required of you—yes, that includes staring at a blank page trying to force your thoughts onto the page like you were technopath. And even if you haven’t started writing yet, this can be a helpful strategy to loosen up some thoughts and warm your brain up to the writing process even before the writer’s block has hit you.

Ask for Help

It’s never easy to admit that you need help, but sometimes it’s just what you need to get your ideas rolling. For me, I always like to have someone look over a draft that I am working on before I finish it. Even for this blog post, I asked someone I trust to look it over before I finished it! In my own experience writing can sometimes get stuck when I’m in the middle of working my way through it, so I highly recommend to get a second opinion when this feels like the case.

I promise this wasn’t just a way of making this a signpost for the University Writing Center, but it is an incredibly useful service chock full of excellent people who know the struggles of writing and writer’s block and can empathize with your own struggles. So, if you’ve thrown the kitchen sink at the problem and the page remains as blank as ever, try throwing the shower drain too and come see us. We’d love to help see you through it!

Poetry as a Form of Journaling for Inner Peace

Braydon Dungan, Writing Consultant

Journaling has become a common method for many individuals looking to begin a journey of healing and mindfulness. Journaling can be a great way to write down one’s thoughts as they come, removing any unwanted images that revolve around our mind and evicting them onto a sheet of paper. Something about taking the thoughts inside our head and placing them onto something tangible allows us to feel seen, to feel heard, to feel listened to.

Trauma can show itself in many forms and can arise from a variety of different circumstances. I know peers who experience trauma due to the death of a loved one, the effect of a poor mental health diagnosis, or the aftereffects of an abusive relationship. For me, I’ve struggled with speaking out about the trauma I’ve endured at the hands of those who wished to manipulate and abuse me. I’ve been conditioned to compartmentalize the abuse I’ve endured, and I’ve had to learn how to process the pain of the past in a way conducive to my own healing and mental health.

For some, journaling doesn’t have that helpful effect that it does on others. Journaling can seem difficult to maintain on a consistent basis, and it can often seem like an obstacle in a day already filled with plenty of challenges. In result, I’ve attempted to shift from journaling to writing poetry. Now, I don’t see myself as any sort of talented writer of poetry whatsoever; in fact, I’ve never really had much formal training in writing poetry at all. Still, I wanted to give it a shot due to my inadequacy at maintaining a consistent journaling schedule.

I’ve noticed that when I use poetry as a form of journaling, I’m able to ruminate and process the thoughts I have much more carefully than when I journal in a stream-of-consciousness manner. When I journal, I don’t really think about what I’m thinking… I simply recognize the thought in my head, transfer it to paper, and move onto the next thought.

With poetry, I force myself to visualize the words that swirl in my head, and I have to create abstract images and metaphors that relay the emotions I want to communicate to my intended audience. I don’t worry about poetry structure or rhythm; instead, I solely focus on the words, themselves, and the power each word brings to my page.

One of the most common manners I write poetry is directly towards an individual in my life. Sometimes, I write poetry about my family, and I allow myself to process and reflect on the love and positive emotions I have towards them. On the other hand, I also write about people who have pained me in the past, individuals who have taken it upon themselves to incur manipulation, deceit, and hate into my life.

I want to include a short poem I wrote in the middle of the night upon waking up from a trauma-induced nightmare:

my fear of drowning.

there were nights i used to wonder

if the void was worth the risk

of taking that first breath of water

i never wanted to feel it burn

like it did in the nightmares i had

of you with anybody else but me

I wasn’t sure how I could illustrate exactly how I felt. I didn’t want to write down what happened in my nightmare and force myself to relive it; instead, I just wanted to process what had happened, and one of the most effective ways to do this was by comparing my trauma to the painful act of drowning. I didn’t write this to wallow in my sorrows or to draw attention to myself; I wrote this for me, for healing, for the place I want to be, the place I strive to get to every day of my life.

Now, when I talk to those around me who struggle with their own trauma and mental health challenges, I encourage them to use poetry as journaling.

And now, I challenge you; take a moment, close your eyes, and allow whichever thoughts that naturally creep in to be recognized and not shoved away. Take five minutes and write yourself a quick poem; think of metaphors, images, senses. Don’t worry about rhyming or the structure of your poem—just write!

I can assure you that after writing your poem, you will feel more clearheaded than you did before. Let’s all take an opportunity out of our hectic, challenging days to ruminate on our thoughts and turn them into something beautiful, powerful, and tangible.

The Importance of Breaks in Academia

Charlie Ward, Writing Consultant

At times, it may feel as though education is all consuming. As a student, your life — and, ultimately, your identity — becomes entrenched by course readings and research projects. For me, balancing the mental load of helping writers with their projects — while also trying to do my own writing projects — becomes a bit too much around the middle of the semester. I love helping people, but I often forget to help myself. The pressure I feel to be the perfect consultant, the perfect student, the perfect child, and the perfect partner all become too much to handle; the pressures of academia make me sick with anxiety. I know it’s okay to cry — and hopefully that’s a lesson you’re learning, too — but you need other coping methods. Sometimes, you need to take a break.

It may also feel as though you don’t have much time for anything beyond academics; the idea of taking time for yourself may cause you guilt and anxiety. The relentless “culture of productivity,” or, the social climate that reinforces overworking yourself, may make it difficult for you to feel like you can take a break. But you can — and I’m here to tell you that.

Here are some tips that may help you:

Force yourself to take a break.

Realistically, this is step one: humans need time to breathe, time to create, and time to be comforted. It’s easier said than done, but don’t let “productivity culture” make you feel like you can’t take a few minutes to yourself. Don’t let peers dissuade you, either. Painting a still life, going for a walk, listening to your favorite album, or even just looking outside are great ways to readjust mentally.

I know I’m kind of preaching to the choir here, but this time to destress is crucial. If you’re a planner, plan your break; if you’re spontaneous, stop your work early one evening. Time to relax will prevent an inevitable breakdown, whether it be the result of an overloaded schedule or other excruciating factors. This break time has helped me through hard times — I promise everything will sort itself out.

Keep work and home separate.

I’m not referring to physical space here, but rather the workload between work and home. I usually do the majority of my work for the upcoming week during my weekends; however, I only allow myself to work from 9 am – 5 pm. By giving myself the evening to relax, I’m able to get up the next morning more motivated to work. Try to find an hour where you stop working: a huge weight will be lifted off your shoulders.

Try not to talk too much about work when not at work. I know this is seemingly impossible — I definitely fall into ruts where I talk about nothing but my work — but you need to find something else to talk about. You can talk about the weather, you can talk about the new Netflix special you just watched, or you can commiserate on how much you hate the month of January — it just needs to be something not related to work. It will help give your brain a break from the constant stresses of academia.

Don’t be afraid to ask for help.

There comes a time where we need a bit more than a break: things can become too much, things can become too loud, and things can become impossible to do on your own. When this happens, it’s more than okay to ask for help.

The cultural stigma against mental health can make it difficult to ask for help; these situations are exacerbated by feelings of guilt and anxiety, whether they be the result of academia or other factors. Conversations around the importance of breaks and community are extremely important in promoting self-advocacy.

I understand the hesitation towards taking a break, especially for students and people who just need to get stuff done. On the other hand, I also understand what it looks like when you don’t take a break: I’ve had semesters where I stopped showing up to classes, semesters where I’ve dropped classes, semesters where I failed classes. I was too scared to ask for help, and I had dug myself into a rut — productivity had clouded my ability to think clearly, and ultimately, I felt the only way I could cope with the stress was to stop being me for a while. This sounds dark, but I just want to emphasize the importance of making time for yourself.

In graduate school, I made a pact with myself to always take time if I need it. I made a pact that I would always take an hour or two to do whatever I want, even when my workload seems endless. I’m not here to tell you that I’ve been entirely without anxiety, but I’ve been able to stay above water — and that’s okay!

This semester, remember to take a break. It doesn’t matter whether it’s five minutes or five hours: take time to understand who you are and what makes you happy. Try to bottle up that happiness — whether it be memories of your pets or how the sun makes you feel — and look back on it in moments of stress. You can always change your assignments or your research, but don’t let them change you.

Writing Yourself into Your Future

Christina Davidson, Writing Consultant

The start of a new year lends itself to thoughts of beginnings. The gentle rhythms inspired by the calendar year can be wonderful reminders of work we intend to do in our own lives. I’d like to use this space to invite you to do a little deeper work than just forming a resolution to meet a few goals. I’d like to suggest the use of writing as a way to dig into discovering what you want out of your academic career, where you want to go, and how you intend to get there. I’d also like to ask you to consider how using your assigned writing tasks can accomplish these purposes, too.

First, try to think back to one of your earliest writing projects. For me, I immediately think of my very first course in research writing that I took my freshman year. I was excited to take this class since I had always loved to write. However, after the opening class session of the course, I found myself full of anxiety about how to create a proper research paper. I remember thinking to myself, “What is APA exactly? – and how in the world do I format in-text citations?” This is certainly hilarious to me now considering my current position on our campus, but it illustrates what I’d like you to think about today. Everything you choose to pursue in life will have a beginning. And writing is a great way to take yourself into a new identity you’ve never held before.

Our Program Assistant, Maddy, as well as our Assistant Director for Graduate Student Writing, Kendyl, explored these ideas in recent posts, asking us to fully accept the identity of a writer. Today, I’m asking you to think of the other identities your writing may ask you to accept. In my earlier example, I decided to claim “researcher” as a title. In other courses it may have been “poet” or “essayist”, or in this instance, the title of “blogger” becomes something I can write myself into. Each new writing task can provide us with an opportunity to step into a new future.

I’d like to turn to my original example of “researcher” because I think it is of particular relevance in the spring term. Many college freshmen will be taking ENGL 102 this semester and developing a research project for the very first time. If this pertains to you, I ask you to consider how you can take your class assignment and make it meaningful for your future. What kind of research interests you most? Where do you see yourself headed in your academic and professional career? Many times, we may feel we will assume some kind of professional authority once we graduate or achieve the job we desire in our field. I have certainly felt this way in my own professional experience. But in truth, our voices are developing now. The research work one does in an ENGL 102 course can begin to “write into” a new field and a new professional identity. And if we fully adopt this idea, suddenly all our coursework can achieve a profound relevance into the development of our futures.

Once you have embraced the title of “researcher”, I would like to invite you to take it one step further and to share your discoveries with others. You might be amazed at how your learning will deepen once you make this critical move. One wonderful opportunity to do this is at the UofL Undergraduate Arts and Research Showcase. I was fortunate enough to serve as a judge for this showcase in the spring of 2022. I was so impressed with the work presented by UofL students, as well as the collegial spirit in the room. If interested, your chance to get involved will arrive soon; abstracts are due by April 17, 2023.

The University Writing Center is a great place to obtain feedback on any research project. If you are considering becoming a part of the Arts and Research showcase, please come in and talk with a consultant. We can help you to review your project, plan out your poster presentation, and even help with writing the application.

The new year is a great time to reflect on the previous year and to focus upon what you would like to accomplish in the next. Give yourself time to think about how your own writing, be it assigned by an instructor or personal writing, can be a way to lead into your goals. Sometimes all it takes is a new perspective to make all the difference in how we view our writing. We can deepen the meaning in our assigned writing by considering how it fits into the larger picture of our future goals. At the writing center we look forward to working with all writers this semester as we aim toward our futures as writers, researchers, poets, essayists, bloggers – wherever writing may lead!

New Year, New You: Writing Resolutions for 2023

Annmarie Steffes, Associate Director

A few weeks into 2023, here at the University Writing Center, we are already abuzz with thrilling conversations about writing. I don’t know about you, but for me, the new year and the start of a new semester hold the wonderful promise of new beginnings. I daydream about being someone else, or at least a better version of myself: Annmarie 2.0. For instance, in 2022, I vowed to become chef Annmarie, whipping up unburnt baked goods weekly and, of course, using all the veggies in the fridge long before they wilt in despair.

If you wonder if I ever achieve these goals, the answer is no I do not. You probably saw that coming. Researchers could easily use me as one data point proving that New Year’s resolutions do not work.

But here’s the thing about creating these new identities: they do lead me to experiment with new habits. In my efforts to become a chef, I mustered the courage to roast a whole chicken, to make broth from the carcass, and then to concoct a soup (without a recipe no less). I could not have had the courage for those tasks if I had not first envisioned myself as a chef. The fantasy that I had of myself as a future Gordon Ramsey allowed me to take risks and venture into territory I would never have explored otherwise.

In the Writing Center, we often ask writers to imagine their audience for their text. Who are you writing to? What are the expectations of your audience? What background or experiences might they have and how does that influence their perspective? This sort of daydreaming has led me to write more compelling prose as I aim to foster a relationship with the person on the receiving end of my paper.

But, what if we as writers spent time imagining other identities for ourselves? In my appointments, I often hear people visiting us for the first time apologizing for being a “bad writer” or say, as Kendyl and Maddy said last year, that they are not writers at all. Believing that “bad writer” or “not a writer” is an unchangeable fact about us limits our writing strategies and narrows our ambitions.

And so, I encourage you to think about what new writing identity you might try adopting and performing this spring semester. You may not believe it yet but playing the part might prompt you to develop new habits, take more risks, and shift what you think is possible for yourself. Let’s say I am writing a research paper about climate change. How might my writing change when instead of seeing myself as an amateur determined to showcase all my knowledge to my professor, I imagine myself to be a climate change expert writing my action plan to a panel of key government and business leaders? I would state my views more assertively, treat sources as my peers rather than merely authority figures, and strive to make my proposal attractive to those in power. I approach my writing differently.

In addition to inspiring a dose of confidence, role playing writerly identities can help you understand other points of view, thereby cultivating a more empathetic attitude and writing more nuanced arguments. For instance: How might I write this essay if I positioned myself as an opponent of this social or political issue rather than an advocate for it? Or perhaps: What might I write if I imagined myself as a specific person in the debate or this one particular theorist? Everything we write does not have to be the end-all be-all of what we believe; we can embody different positions and attitudes, try them on for size, jump up and down, wiggle around in them, see how they fit.

Now, I do not advocate for inauthenticity, nor do I recommend never writing from you own embodied reality. What is considered formal or correct academic writing is often middle-class, standard white English and prizes certain evidence, experience, or support over other kinds. Higher education needs diversity of viewpoints and identities to challenge this hierarchy and offer important correctives. But reimagining your identity as an author can be a useful process to clarifying what your writing identity actually is, apart from what you believe your professor wants it to be.

As a teacher myself, I know that faculty play an important role in creating an educational environment that allows for students to play and explore who they might be as writers. In their 2015 book Hospitality and Authoring: An Essay for the English Profession, Richard and Janis Haswell challenge teachers to trust the student’s writing and imagine the singularity of the person behind it, reading the choices of text in a way that “seeks the conditions that might have understandably or humanely led to it” (92). When we see complicated and complex jargon, for instance, don’t assume that students cannot write; they are trying to embody the person of the chemist, the engineer, the humanities scholar using the examples given to them, and isn’t that what we want? Guide them on how to adopt that identity with more credibility or challenge them to write from a myriad of perspectives.

We might not be a Joan Didion, a Herman Melville, a James Baldwin, or an Isabel Allende yet—but we also might surprise ourselves.

Healing Trauma Through Writing

Elizabeth Pope, Writing Consultant

Writing is academic, scholarly, and creative in genres of poetry, prose, fiction, or creative non-fiction. Writing is publishable, presentable at conferences, or shoved into a drawer never to look at again. As a woman and first year Ph.D. student with an M.A. in English Literature and an M.F.A. in Creative Writing, I value the integrity of writing as an art form. At the same time, I honor writing as an inclusive act of expression that extends beyond degree, career, or publication. Writing held my hand through tough times, and it is this practice of writing as an act of healing that transcends art, craft, or accolade. Writing is primordial as hieroglyphics and essential as meditation. Writing is also a friend, prayer, and eternal question.

On February 11, 2022, I began to write again for the first time since the pandemic began after graduating in the summer of 2020 with my M.F.A. and entering the chaos of new systems of public virtual schooling for my daughters, while my husband worked as an essential worker within Covid-units, Covid-tent construction, and Covid-vaccine construction as an electrical contractor within hospitals. In February, I began a recovery journey with my daughter after her spinal fusion, years of physical therapy with Norton Neuroscience and Spinal Rehabilitation Center, and preparatory surgery appointments at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital. When her spinal curve entered a degree that was detrimental to her heart and lungs, during the height of the pandemic, we had to wait until she was of age for vaccines to proceed with the spinal fusion with the intention of limiting possible complications. I was not able to write through this time of preparing for her surgery. It was hard to comprehend her vulnerability, complexity of the surgery, and pain of her recovery. It was not until her time in the hospital that I was able to speak about the actual surgery, ask her team of doctors about anatomy, and specifics of what occurred during her spinal fusion. I began to write about the process of her immediate post-surgery in the hospital during times that she slept without interruption from nurses, pain teams, or doctors. During these quiet and dim moments in the hospital room, I wrote about uncertainties, reliefs from a successful surgery, anatomy of the spine (an aspect that I was unable to confront until post-surgery was successful), and the hardships of seeing someone that I love in immense pain.

What I wrote in the late hours of the hospital room was what I was unable to verbalize with doctors, nurses, family, and friends. I wrote about the relief that overshadowed lack of sleep, uncertainty of home recovery, and life after post-recovery. In a pandemic and post-pandemic world the hospital is a healing but isolating place. It provides a quiet introspection that is lonely if an outlet is not provided. Writing was the healing outlet for me as art therapy was a healing outlet for my daughter and other patients. I was not singular in writing as a method of connecting with presence of the tasks at hand, fears of the possibility of what might have gone wrong, what was going wrong, or as a way to connect to support systems who were unable to visit the hospital during the de-escalation of heightened Covid-19 concerns. CaringBridge is a media outlet that is provided to parents, guardians, and caregivers who have patients within hospital settings.

There are nights you can see screens within patient’s rooms glowing from parents updating their CaringBridge accounts for friends, family, or their child’s friends—who are also support systems outside of the hospital. Time seems to evaporate inside rooms of a hospital. Days are nights and nights are days. Moments are fast paced or desolate when the child is resting. It is in those quiet moments that writing in a journal, social media outlet, text, email, or mode of connection like CaringBridge provides parents moments of reflection and expression after hours, days, weeks, months, or years of attempting to remain calm and collected through high-stress environments. The act of putting what is unspoken to paper allows the stress of an experience to transform from what is carried, or what is afraid to be said, into an acceptance that is tangible. Writing, in this way, is a reconciliation with traumas that are unrecognizable and carried through complicated and demanding situations. Writing in this way is also a reflection, retrospection, and method of measuring what is overcome.

Writing, in a recovery or hospital setting, allows for articulate and direct conversations with doctors, teams, and nurses. Writing allowed me to move past emotional responses of worry, frustration, and sadness to arrive at rationality that allowed for focus on immediate questions such as: if her pain management is not working what other option might be enacted immediately? Writing is an act of presence and hope that if the trauma is shared—even if it is an unrecognizable trauma—it is no longer a secret, fear to harbor, or shame to suppress. In this way writing is an act of healing.

I did not keep any of the writings from the surgery, in hospital, recovery, or homecare recovery. I erased it all. Her struggle to process her own traumatic event was not something that I wanted her to relive or that I wanted to relive. Although she is fully recovered and the surgery is a distant memory, there was a time when our inability to communicate shared fears and grief was stalled. After the experience and anticipation of the surgery, writing offered moments of connection to what was difficult, hopes of a better life for someone that I loved, and reflections of strengths that I witnessed in my child. I wrote to remember moments when she encountered specific obstacles with bravery, such as when she began to walk again downstairs (one step, two feet at a time) when she walked long distances outside of a wheelchair, and when she ran and slid into a homerun in her softball league this summer. I wrote to remind her that obstacles in life are inevitable, she overcame them once, so in the future she will overcome them again. I wanted to remember moments that she did not give up, overcame something hard, and moments that it was important to simply listen and not speak except into paper and ink.